Hydraulic fracturing is a technique often used to access resource deposits such as hydrocarbon deposits and other types of resources trapped in a rock formation, such as a shale formation. Hydraulic fracturing is often combined with horizontal drilling to reduce the surface disturbance of the drilling operation, and also to reach multiple hydrocarbon deposits spread across vast areas.
Horizontal drilling techniques for forming a wellbore often include vertically drilling from a surface location to a desired subterranean depth, from which point, drilling is curved or at a sub-terrain plane approximately horizontal to the surface to connect the wellbore to multiple hydrocarbon deposits. Once the wellbore and support structures have been formed, a perforating gun is lowered down the wellbore and is detonated at multiple locations of the wellbore to generate explosions into the wellbore to create a plurality of perforations along rock formations surrounding the wellbore. A fracking fluid is pumped into the wellbore to create and to augment fractures in the rock formations surrounding the perforations. The fracking fluid may also include particles that help to preserve the structural integrity of the perforations and surrounding fractures during operation of the well.
The illustrated figures are only exemplary and are not intended to assert or imply any limitation with regard to the environment, architecture, design, or process in which different embodiments may be implemented.